Is the 14th Street Bridge Detour "Safe Accommodation"?

Last month, NPS announced that they were going to improve the 14th Street Bridge Connector Path that connects East Basin Drive to the 14th Street Bridge sidepath.

The project will widen and improve the trail surface, correct a dangerous slope along the path and improve the crosswalks and crosswalk markings across East Basin Drive. At the same time, a two-way cycle track will be installed in one lane of East Basin Drive where it passes the Jefferson Memorial, providing a dedicated and protected route for cyclists.

Unfortunately it required them to close the existing connector and detour the trail onto the adjacent stairs and for 6 days to close it entirely.

The improvements to the 14thStreetBridge connector are a cooperative effort of the National Park Service, the District Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). The $275,000 project being funded primarily from a Transportation Alternatives Program grant from FHWA.

I'm not sure how much DDOT is involved in this. I heard about it years ago when NPS presented it to the BAC. At the time there was no mention of a detour. At the September BAC meeting I seem to recall it came up and we were told that the support for the highway sign that lands in the middle of the trail would not be removed as part of this project, which we asked for back when NPS presented.

The detour started on 9/24 and supposed to last 10 weeks. When I went out there I was able to use the side of the stairs like a runnel, but I guess that others had trouble with that because about a month afterwards NPS installed a metal runnel for cyclists to use. It'd be nice to know if this was an afterthought, a reaction to complaints or something they'd always planned but weren't able to coordinate well.

There aren't a lot of good options here as I see it. The stairs, even with the runnel, represent an inconvenient detour to some and impossible barrier to others - and of course the full closure is a barrier to all. NPS obviously couldn't figure out a way to keep the trail open in the gap where the trail normally goes - and I don't know enough about their space requirements to second guess that.

That leaves two options:

a) build a temporary protected bike lane on the bridge outside of the current trail, similar to what was done on the Custis recently;

b) or build a shorter one that somehow gets to the trail before crossing the bridge.

The temporary PBL would either remove a traffic lane or narrow all the lanes and move them to the left using the 5' shoulder that's there now. Shifting and narrowing would mean temporarily re-striping the whole bridge. And both options would mean building ~3000 feet of barrier and connector trails at each end.

The other option is a little more crazy and might not even work. That would be to build one connector trail east of the construction site and use the shoulder on the ramp to get around the construction; and then somehow transition back to the trail before the railing starts. Lots of problems with that. One is that the shoulder narrows to about 1 foot wide before getting past the construction site. Then there's the matter of the concrete barrier between the road and the landing at the top of the stairs. So they'd need to either remove some/all of the guardrail further down the ramp and then build a narrow, temporary trail along the guardrail and the barrier OR build a pair of ramps to lift the trail over the guardrail. And that only works if the construction has the space to spare (since the temporary trail is inside their zone). Otherwise, they'd need to extend the bypass all the way to the landing and then get over the concrete barrier (or remove a section of it) which would require removing some of a lane of 395 or narrowing it anyway.

It's tempting to look at the Custis bypass and think that this is the same situation, but there are more than a few ways those projects differed. The Custis bypass didn't take a lane of interstate, for starters. It was about half as long in distance and the closure time was a little longer. And perhaps most importantly there wasn't an option (the stairs in this case) that served 90% of trail users readily available. All of this is to say that it cost less, caused less disruption for others and had more benefits. That doesn't mean that the temporary bypass on I-395 isn't worth it, just that the numbers aren't as favorable. In the case of the Custis it made sense, but for another Custis trail closure this year - something like that didn't.

I don't have any of the information I'd need in order to say that one option is better than the other. Here are some things I'd need to know:

How much would each option cost and would there even be money for it?

What effect would closing a lane or narrowing the lanes have on traffic?

Would narrowing lanes violate safety requirements?

Would it even be possible to take the lane - especially through the ramp from the bridge to the GW Parkway - safely?

Could space be made available on the south west edge of the construction for a bypass?

How long would it take to construct/remove a bypass?

How many trail users are impacted and what is the nature of that impact? (Some are inconvenienced, others take a different route and for some this trail is effectively closed)

When I eyeball it, I think NPS probably landed on the best of several bad options, but like I said - I don't know. Sometimes to repair Metro it has to be closed. Sometimes to repair a road it has to be closed and sometimes to repair a trail it has to be closed.

It would have been nice if they had put out a closure plan and asked for comments. And then maybe we could have asked NPS all of these questions at some kind of public forum. If that had happened someone might have pointed out that a runnel would be nice (It wasn't until halfway through the project that it was installed. I had no problem using the concrete edge of the staircase, but I'm guessing others did, hence the runnel. It's possible that even with a public meeting no one would have thought of the runnel until after the detour was in effect, but we'll never know).

Which brings us to the question of Safe Accommodation. The Bicycle Safety Amendment Act of 2013 requires construction projects to obtain permits from DDOT for projects that block sidewalks, bike lanes, or other pedestrian or bicycle paths to provide safe accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists. I'm actually not sure if that applies to NPS. DC adopted regulations for that in 2014. Those regulations can be found here.

Specifically, (emphasis mine)

The term “safe accommodation” means a safe and convenient route for pedestrians and bicyclists that ensures an accommodation through or around a work zone that is equal to the accommodation that was provided to pedestrians and bicyclists before the blockage of the sidewalk, bicycle lane, or other public bicycle path.

And when ticking down the options - which seem more applicable to bike lanes - these are the two that seem relevant.

(3) Closing the adjacent motor vehicle travel lane to provide space for a bicycle lane; provided that a minimum of one (1) motor vehicle travel lane shall remain in the same direction of travel;

(5) As a last resort, detouring bicyclists onto an adjacent roadway, in which case the detour route shall replicate, as closely as practicable, the level of safety found on the bicycle route being blocked.

The Custis trail option does meet the requirements of (3) assuming it could be done safely, and I suppose one could argue that the stairs are not as safe as the old trail. In addition, the regulations require that blocking a pedestrian path complies with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and I would not be surprised if this doesn't.

And there doesn't appear to be any waiver process. So either this law doesn't apply to NPS, DC never gave them a public right-of-way occupancy permit or they gave them one even though they aren't in compliance with the law.

So I'm in the position of thinking that NPS probably got the best solution, though I'm not sure of it and that it might be violating the law. Which is all kind of wishy-washy.

But there's one more issue and that's the timing. I'd love to know why this had to be done at a time when it overlapped the Memorial Bridge closure. But I don't, because again - there was no public meeting for this.

That's where I am. I don't know if this was the right detour or if the timing was necessary, but I'm certain there should have been some public vetting of this beforehand

Addendum: I forgot one other idea. Do two projects. First replace the stairs with a ramp. Then fix the trail and make the ramp the detour. A ramp where the stairs are would be better anyway in my opinion. But, of course, that would require a lot more money.

Thanks for looking into this and writing it up. I agree that there are no easy fixes and that public input of some kind should have occurred.

I think the best option would be to pull up the guardrail and, using barrels or a jersey wall, create a lane next to the existing path. Of course, the stairway option is much cheaper.

My only quibble with your analysis is where you say that the staircase detour works just fine for 90% of users. You pulled that "90%" out of thin air. We don't know how many bike commuters have given up because their CaBi, cargo bike, ebike, trike, etc can't be pulled up and down the stairs. I personally know a few who aren't riding right now, but I don't have the data either. By the way, I don't see how a ramp at the stairs would work either -- too steep of grade for both bicyclists an pedestrians.

"You pulled that "90%" out of thin air." Well, it's an educated guess. 10% of MVT users are pedestrians. Then many people who use this crossing can almost as easily use another bridge, so their only slightly inconvenienced. Then, I've never seen a cargo bike or trike going across the bridge (it's pretty narrow on the DC side) so it seems rare. CaBi and E-bike - those can be done. I've never seen anyone in a wheelchair cross it either. I'd say 90% is conservative and low.

As for the ramp. You can drop a ramp 1 inch for every foot of distance. The landing is about 25 feet high and the distance to the end of the abutment is about 80 feet. That gives you room to get down about 5 feet from the top of the stairs to the abutment, Then turn 90 degrees and go back and forth 30 feet each way. That's another 6 feet. Should be enough to go under the bridge. Then just run out the ramp along the inside of the abutments until your at sidewalk level. Doable, but not cheap.

I'm pretty sure from some correspondence with BikeArlington that the runnel was in response to complaints.

Whoever among the different actors believed that any solution with just stairs (with or without runnel) is a reasonable substitute for most cyclists in this kind of situation shows a lack of awareness of the variety of bikes out there as well as their riders.

I will say I look forward to the resulting improved trail - a miscalculation could lead to a serious crash if a rider went off the trail in some parts of it.

The fact that the runnels, such as they are, went into full service only last week (the same week the project was finished) speaks to the lack of consideration of the detour in the project planning. The runnels (if that was the selection) should have been installed back in early September, before hundreds of cyclists were using the stairs.

Perhaps. I'd like to know why they weren't put in back then. Possibilities:

1. Even after consulting with people in the bike community, no one ever thought of it until the detour opened, and then it took time.

2. They planned it all along but the delivery of the equipment was late and they decided not to wait for them to arrive. I could see weather and the Arlington Bridge being schedule constraints that they don't want to wait for, for example.

3. They never talked to a bike person about the detour. Or they did and ignored them. Or they listened to them, ordered the stuff, got it on time and just didn't install it until the last week. All of these are thumbs down.